It's now easier than ever for Vietnamese to travel abroad

Dao and her husband recently returned to Hanoi from Cambodia. “The way they (Cambodia) promote tourism is really professional, though the infrastructure and utilities are worse than Vietnam,” she said. “There are so many Vietnamese travelers in Cambodia. You can meet them everywhere.”

Dao enjoyed the trip because she could make friends with other middle-aged women, who also love traveling. Soon after finishing the trip to Cambodia, they began thinking about the destination for next month.

“We don’t like traveling domestically. The scenes in Vietnam are very beautiful, but the services are bad,” Dao said.

Vietnam has seen the trend of traveling abroad rise in the last two to three years. A travel firm in Hanoi said 70 out of 100 clients of the firm book outbound tours. 

In high season, the firm often has to stop bookings sooner than planned because of the higher than expected number of travelers. The tours at VND10 million are especially attractive. 

The travel firm also finds it easier to design outbound tours because of stable and predictable fee services.

According to Nguyen Cong Hoan, deputy director of Hanoi Redtours, Vietnamese want to visit developed countries and see new, different things not available in Vietnam. administrative procedures are no longer a problem for them now and tour fees are reasonable, while the services are good. 

Having realized the great potential of the Vietnamese market, Thailand, the Republic of Korea, Japan and Singapore have set up tourism promotion agencies in Vietnam, and airlines have opened new air routes to Vietnam. 

On the Vietnam-Thailand route, for example, five to six airlines now provide direct flights, while the return ticket is just US$120-130, or VND3 million, which is even cheaper than the ticket for the Hanoi-Nha Trang flight.

The high number of Vietnamese people traveling abroad, therefore, is not a surprise at all. The Republic of Korea received more than 250,000 Vietnamese travelers in 2016, an increase of 58% over 2015. 

From 2012 to 2016, the number of Vietnamese travelers to Japan increased by four times. With the participation of seven air carriers which provide 220 flights between Vietnam and Taiwan, 40,000 Vietnamese traveled to Taiwan in January 2017, an increase of 91% over the same period last year.

Cambodia received 1 million Vietnamese travelers and Thailand 830,000 in 2016.